Bloghound

I just finished a research project about marketing analytics with Dave Bond of Sapient that you can download here. Highlights of our findings:

Overall takeaway

Analytics isn’t about measuring and reporting. It’s about aligning marketing with corporate goals and generating meaning from the data to guide decisions.

Former Nissan CMO and Hyundai Motor America chief operating officer Steve Wilhite summed up the issue well when he explained to us:

“People are spending a tremendous amount of money to generate data, much of which is useless. At the end of the day the metrics you choose to measure should be part and parcel of strategy development. Being able to measure what you’re trying to accomplish is what becomes important in business planning and obviously it becomes important in justifying the particular execution that you choose.”

Six major obstacles

1. Lack of agreement and support from senior executives
2. Gap between corporate goals and tactical analytics
3. The tyranny of metrics, aka the ROI black hole
4. Misleading insights from measuring silos
5. Alignment requires change management heavy lifting and patience
6. Confusion about fundamental types of analytics and measures

Five guiding principles for creating a marketing analytics strategy

1. Get on the same page about the measures that matter the most
2. Adopt just a few measures
3. Use a portfolio approach
4. Build analytics into marketing strategy
5. Know the devil is in the data: collaborate with IT

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